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41333a4
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All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralising. People, in that case, are less c..
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violence
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Oscar Wilde |
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92af3fb
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It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.
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Oscar Wilde |
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8d031f9
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you will always love, and you will always be loved
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Oscar Wilde |
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c508268
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It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.
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Oscar Wilde |
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df5841b
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You can't possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It's absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that.
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humor
vegetarianism
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Oscar Wilde |
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b582cae
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Salome, Salome, dance for me. I pray thee dance for me. I am sad to-night. Yes, I am passing sad to-night. When I came hither I slipped in blood, which is an evil omen; and I heard, I am sure I heard in the air a beating of wings, a beating of giant wings. I cannot tell what they mean .... I am sad to-night. Therefore dance for me. Dance for me, Salome, I beseech you. If you dance for me you may ask of me what you will, and I will give it y..
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monolouge
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Oscar Wilde |
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e62531a
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Good heavens! how marriage ruins a man! It's as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.
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Oscar Wilde |
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d104183
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You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing.
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Oscar Wilde |
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a5f0060
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Nothing annoys people so much as not receiving invitations.
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invitation
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Oscar Wilde |
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d493bf0
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All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon.
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Oscar Wilde |
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72f87b4
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My dear Algy, you talk exactly as if you were a dentist. It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces false impression
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Oscar Wilde |
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034e90e
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Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams.
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passions
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Oscar Wilde |
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ec3d1e4
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I am a born antinomian. I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes.
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Oscar Wilde |
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5867f13
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How pale the Princess is! Never have I seen her so pale. She is like the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver.
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sadness
rose
princess
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Oscar Wilde |
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677c7ef
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You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of color in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play. I tell you Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend.
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Oscar Wilde |
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96c529e
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My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.
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Oscar Wilde |
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d4b651c
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We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.
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english
britain
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Oscar Wilde |
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d0e2cdc
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One of the great secrets of life. Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense and discover too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
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Oscar Wilde |
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9b98215
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I am afraid that woman appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than anything else. They have wonderfully primitive instincts. We have emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters, all the same. They love being dominated.
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Oscar Wilde |
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3209ab3
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Cecily. This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade. Gwendolen. [Satirically.] I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.
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Oscar Wilde |
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65a4bed
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The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.
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writing
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Oscar Wilde |
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fd84440
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Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
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the-picture-of-dorian-gray
wilde
oscar-wilde
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Oscar Wilde |
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e685918
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Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right.
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marriage
women
humor
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Oscar Wilde |
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0766e09
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because to influence a person is to give one's own soul.
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the-picture-of-dorian-gray
oscar-wilde
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Oscar Wilde |
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d6e9b82
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You silly Arthur! If you knew anything about...anything, which you don't, you would know that I adore you. Everyone in London knows it except you. It is a public scandal the way I adore you. I have been going about for the last six months telling the whole of society that I adore you. I wonder you consent to have anything to say to me. I have no character left at all. At least, I feel so happy that I am quite sure I have no character left a..
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marriage
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Oscar Wilde |
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d2f6d80
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Even things that are true can be proved.
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truth
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Oscar Wilde |
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efe4e52
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When a golden girl can win Prayer from out the lips of sin, When the barren almond bears, And a little child gives away its tears, Then shall all the house be still And peace come to Canterville.
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Oscar Wilde |
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974c93c
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A sentimentalist is simply one who wants to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it. We think we can have our emotions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing emotions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine. The intellectual and emotional life of ordinary people is a very contemptible affair. Just as they borrow their ideas from a sort of circulating library of thought---the..
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Oscar Wilde |
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f5213fd
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There is no good talking to him," said a Dragon-fly, who was sitting on the top of a large brown bulrush; "no good at all, for he has gone away." "Well, that is his loss, not mine," answered the Rocket. "I am not going to stop talking to him merely because he pays no attention. I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a..
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Oscar Wilde |
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1e816cc
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Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is.
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Oscar Wilde |
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6cce0ed
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Yes,' he cried, 'you have killed my love! You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid. My God! how mad I was to love you! What a fool I have been! You are..
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Oscar Wilde |
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af46168
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Nature....she will hang the night stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send word the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.
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Oscar Wilde |
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332b25d
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What is done is done. What is past is past." "You call yesterday the past?" "What has the actual lapse of time got to do with it? It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them."
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Oscar Wilde |
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6729fbd
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What a fuss people make about fidelity!" exclaimed Lord Henry. "Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say."
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fidelity
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Oscar Wilde |
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e74a1d5
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Muffins should always be eaten quite calmly, as it is the only way to eat them!
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Oscar Wilde |
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538bc73
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You are Beautiful when you are happy
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Oscar Wilde |
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90f88a1
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Oh, I don't care about Jack. I don't care for anybody in the whole world but you. I love you, Cecily. You will marry me, won't you? You silly boy! Of course. Why, we have been engaged for the last three months. For the last three months?
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Oscar Wilde |
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8f8a0c8
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You are a sceptic." "Never! Scepticism is the beginning of faith." "What are you?" "To define is to limit."
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Oscar Wilde |
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35224fd
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Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast
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witticism
oscar-wilde
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Oscar Wilde |
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6a43c36
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Life is terrible. It rules us, we do not rule it.
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Oscar Wilde |
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4da2ff4
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I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die.
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Oscar Wilde |
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2d6adf0
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Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.
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imagination
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Oscar Wilde |
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28ab62b
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Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
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Oscar Wilde |
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91682f9
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I hope to-morrow will be a fine day, Lane. It never is, sir. Lane, you're a perfect pessimist. I do my best to give satisfaction, sir.
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pessimism
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Oscar Wilde |